Due to the disadvantage posed by ANNs, this research work took it up as
its aim the creation of a forecasting model that will predict the quantity of supply
of off-season longan, using the multiple regression technique. The multiple
regression technique is a statistical technique used for predicting the unknown
value of a variable from the known value of two or more variables. The general
formulation of the forecasting model, based on the multiple regression technique,
is given in Equation (1):
Y = a + b1X1 + b2X2 + b3X3 +…+bkXk (1)
From Equation (1), it can be seen that there are k independent factors that
influence Y as a dependent variable. In forecasting the model, Y is a forecasting
value, “a” is a constant term, and “b1, b2, b3,…,bk” are the weights of the different
independent variables “X.”